


An Ice Cream Cone's Chance In Hell

by Celestialfeathers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death is canonical and/or up to interpretation, Gen, Hurt!Adam?, Hurt!Sam, I don't know how to tag this, I swear it isn't as depressing as it sounds, Trueform Angels, also, cage fic, i don't think so anyway, possibly disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4492809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celestialfeathers/pseuds/Celestialfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam told Adam that he was being protected from the other beings, Michael and Lucifer. He told Adam that this union and separation was the only thing keeping Adam from feeling the pain. If they were not joined, Sam could not protect him. If they were not separate, both of them would feel the pain together. It was better this way, he said. This way only the person responsible would be punished. This way Adam wouldn't suffer because of him. Sam could make Adam a world of his own, if he wanted. It wouldn't be real, true, but at this point, did it matter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ice Cream Cone's Chance In Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for the strangeness this time. I wrote for four hours straight, and when I was done, I had this. It was daytime, too! Anyway, I always wanted to try a Cage fic, so here's the result. Warnings for strangeness and somewhat disturbing imagery, if that sort of thing bothers you. It _is_ a Cage fic, so there is/was character death.

It's dark. There's the sensation of falling and falling and falling. It shouldn't matter because he has wings, or at least someone else does, but they fall anyway, maybe because of them. Their wings seem heavy here, pulling down rather than lifting up. 

They keep falling. 

Then they land.

It should hurt, landing. They've fallen forever, it seems, landing at the edge of the universe, the line between everything and nothing, matter and anti-matter. Pale, sharp bones and dark, smooth blood should be everywhere, or at least scattered around the floor that separates what is and is not. They aren't. It should be disconcerting, this distortion of the way things should be. It isn't, though.

Especially since he's so thankful he can't feel it.

There's a pulling sensation, someone ripping out half of the molecules in his body. It isn't painful, this passing-through of himself. It's only when that half of himself is gone that he feels pain.

It's blinding.

Maybe that's just the light, though. The darkness is gone, replaced by a furious, raging light that he knows was once a part of him: the beautiful, achingly alien part that he knew was never his to keep. He hadn't wanted to, even, but now that it was no longer kept it was out, and the light was even more beautiful and achingly alien, untouchable in its glory.

He wanted it to be back with him.

He wanted it to never have existed.

Another light joined his light. This one was just as beautiful, or even more so. Where his light was pure, the new light was more beautiful, tempting with the edge of sin and rebellion, wild and unable to be held.

Except it was being held.

They all were.

The lights, the beings, twined, beautiful and violent, clashing and clawing, reaching and never gaining. There was no sound and yet there was all sound, wind chimes and knives, crackling fires and snapping whips, a hurricane and a dying breath. 

He struggled to comprehend everything that was happening.

He couldn't.

Out of the corner of his eye- though he wasn't sure if that was the correct term, seeing as he may or may not still have eyes- he saw another, smaller light. It was still beautiful, even compared to the beings above; it was a day on the ocean relative to the ocean itself, more personal, more human. Less majestic, certainly, but more meaningful. It shone like the sinful being and yet it didn't; it too was tainted, but the being above was glorious because of it, and this light was radiant despite it.

It was also moving closer.

He couldn't find it in him to care.

The light was next to him now, filling up half of his field of vision. It looked curious somehow, if light could be said to have emotions. He thought it could, since everything here seemed to be either light or dark, and the lights all seemed expressive. The dark, too, was emotive in its own way, he supposed. It was constant, as opposed to the ever-shifting lights, and seemed to always be looming, brooding, waiting for some signal beyond comprehension. He wondered if he was light or dark, since he couldn't see himself and make that judgement. Maybe he was just different, something solid in a world of impressions. 

He was getting off track.

There was no reason to focus.

The light beside him seemed to be saying something, but it was a whisper in a language he didn't understand, rhythmic and poetic, but unintelligible. The beings above seemed to be winding down, their energy not flagging but redirecting, seemingly attracted to the sound of the light's voice. The beings, light though they were, shone their rage and hurtled downwards, unstoppable in their force and devastating in their impact.

He did not feel them hit.

He was somewhere else.

It took a moment- or a year or a century- to figure out what had happened. The light beside him had pulled him into itself. He had merged with this light as he had another, so long ago. They were now one, and yet they were two. He knew that it was not him creating this separation but this other being, this other person. Sam. He knew that the light had been Sam, and he now knew that he was Adam, and that they were together but separate.

He didn't know why.

He didn't know if he wanted to know.

Sam told him anyway. He told Adam that he was being protected from the other beings, Michael and Lucifer. He told Adam that this union and separation was the only thing keeping Adam from feeling the pain. If they were not joined, Sam could not protect him. If they were not separate, both of them would feel the pain together. It was better this way, he said. This way only the person responsible would be punished. This way Adam wouldn't suffer because of him. Sam could make Adam a world of his own, if he wanted. It wouldn't be real, true, but at this point, did it matter?

He didn't know how to feel about that.

He chose not to feel anything. 

The new world formed around him, blocking out the vision of light and sounds of the small not-quite-cries of pain, filling his senses with an idyllic landscape. A park, it seemed, with a lake and benches and trees and little ducks to feed with bread from a corner store. The sky was a soft blue, white clouds and bright kites dotting the surface of the upper edges of the world. Perhaps this sky was the new version of the floor of the universe, the new boundary between real and false, between what is and what is not. Everything seemed the way it should be; it was like a carefully curated shelf of fragile teacups, perfectly placed for aesthetic purposes, but never meant to be used because they were too delicate to be handled without breaking something.

It shouldn't be disconcerting, this projection of the way things should be. 

It is, though.

He walks along the paths woven with tree roots and doesn't trip once, looking out onto the rippling lake and watching the wake the ducklings leave in their path through the water. He follows the path to the small unmarked shop on the edge of the lake, the only sign of any human existence, besides himself and the trails he's been following. He goes inside, and it's an ice cream shop. There's a man at the counter; he has brown hair past his ears and blue-green-gold-brown eyes that aren't looking at him but into the distance, distracted by something that Adam can't see but he knows is there, beyond the sky-boundary.

The man is familiar.

Adam doesn't ask his name, because he knows.

No words are exchanged, because no words are necessary. The man gives him a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream in a cone, the same as he had always gotten with his mom, when she wasn't too tired or busy working. They used to go to the park together and she would push him on the swings, higher and higher until he felt like he could touch the sky. One time he had looked down when he was at the highest point and had started crying. His mom had taken him home, and on the way she had asked him what had made him cry. He was afraid of falling, he had replied. After that, they didn't go to the swing set anymore.

The man at the counter had a bittersweet smile.

Adam wondered whether the man could read his mind, and then wondered if it mattered.

He left the shop and wandered, licking at the ice cream as it slowly melted, running down the cone and onto his hand, leaving a sticky residue that lasted far longer than the ice cream itself did. He walked along the paths around and around the lake, looking at his reflection in its surface as he passed. It was never a revelation. When he grew bored of the lake he walked away, through the rustling trees and green grasses. The world was a quiet one. 

Sometimes he wished there was more noise, something new and loud and exciting.

Mostly, he was afraid of what it would mean if there was.

The trees gave way to plains full of grains of golds and topazes, the world divided into two halves: land and sky, yellow and blue, on and on. Hills rose in the distance, bumps on the horizon that grew closer and closer, changing as he walked on. The hills in the distance grew to mountains, looking like giants with sharp peaks like knives, slicing into the false cerulean ceiling. Despite the distances he traveled, he never grew tired, though he did grow lonely, nothing but himself and the sky and the land for company. 

The unmarked ice cream store was at the foot of the mountain.

He wasn't surprised.

The man inside looked tired, but he dredged up a smile when Adam walked in. It was a sad smile, but it brought out the dimples in the man's cheeks. The man handed him another ice cream cone- Rocky Road- and Adam saw that the man's hands were covered in faint scars that crisscrossed like spider webs. Looking further, the pale lines went from the man's fingertips to his neck; Adam couldn't see all of the man, seeing as he was wearing clothes, but he knew the scars ran over his whole body, leaving only the man's face unmarked. The scars looked like cracks, and the man looked like he was breaking. Adam smiled at the man, and the man smiled back.

Adam left the store before he realized that he didn't have the ice cream with him.

He didn't know what happened to it.

The climb up the mountain would have been an arduous one if this world worked like the real one Adam knew existed somewhere. It didn't work like that, though, and the trek up the mountain was no more exhausting than the one across the plains had been. The air got colder as he went up, but it didn't get thinner, and the cold never bit into his bones through his skin, the way the he knew cold could. The view from the top was magnificent, but it was accompanied by no sense of victory, no wonder at the harsh beauty that comes with defeating cruel nature. He could see the hills and the golden plains, the calm lake with the trees and the ducklings where he had started. He could feel the bright white snow under his legs and hands as he sat, and he could see the rough gray stone he had climbed to get up here. He lay on his back, and all he could see was the sky, soft white against soft blue, swirling clouds and winds. A moment- or a year or a century- passed, and the sky turned crimson.

It looked fluid, almost, like blood.

It looked sharp, almost, like fear.

The sky shattered like stained glass, a loud crack tearing through the air, and the world around him shattered too, turning into fragments of color and sharp edges. Outside of the color there was only the spiraling light, and everything was so bright he could not tell whose light it was. A sense of panic that Adam knew was not his own flooded his senses, and the light around him got brighter, as if by doing that it could keep the other light-beings out. There was a twisting, wrenching feeling, before everything went black.

This blackness was not the looming, brooding, waiting blackness that kept the light in.

This was a comfortable, safe blackness, one that Adam knew did not belong to him any more than the other one did.

Time passed- a moment or a year or a century- and the world formed around him again, like the restart button had been pressed on a videogame. It wasn't the same as it had been, a bit rougher, like it had been glued together, in a way. It felt more real; it felt more beautiful. He was at the lake again, and the ducks were gone, the cessation of their soft quacking louder than the quacking itself had been. The trail was still there, and he tripped over the first tree root he came across, sprawling across the dusty path and getting dirt up his nose and in his mouth. He smiled. When he stood, little dust motes filled the air like tiny planets and galaxies, swirling in panic from the air he had disturbed and glowing in the afternoon sunlight. He followed the trail the same way he had before, this time careful not to trip and disturb even more microscopic universes. The ice cream shop was there, in the same place it had been before. 

He considered not going in.

He entered the shop.

The man didn't even look at him when he came in, didn't look up at the tinkle of the bell the Adam knew hadn't existed in the times before. The scars the man had borne the last time had deepened, cutting into flesh and leaving dark scarlet fissures along his skin. They drip, blood running down his arms and along his hands, leaving a sticky residue where it dries, mixing with that of the melting ice cream the man hands him. There's blood on the cone where the man gripped it, and there's a waterfall of the melting ice cream- Rocky Road- running down the sides too. It disappears before he can take a bite. The cuts looked like chasms, and the man looked like he was breaking. Adam smiled at the man, and the man smiled back.

Adam left the store before he realized he hadn't thanked the man.

He didn't know what he would be thanking him for.

The walk through the trees was much the same as it had been before, though the wind this time was louder than it had been, whipping the branches of the trees back and forth, back and forth. The grasses rippled and shone, and he left footprints behind him, indents in the less perfect, more real ground. 

He knew now, from the shattering of the sky, that sound was a sign of danger.

Sometimes he still wanted something loud.

Again, the plains appeared beyond the trees, a bit less grand than they had been before, perhaps; instead of burnished golds and topazes, the colors were tans and pale yellows, withered grains that made waves from the winds like the ocean did from the tides. He walked on, cutting a trail- a new trail, the same one he had made before; his trail- through the plains, forever heading onward and away, yet never headed anywhere. As he walked, he waited for the hills and mountains appear as they had before, but they never did. He cut his trail through the plains for a century- or a year or a moment- before he saw a change from the half-blue half-yellow division of the world. There was the ice cream shop. As he approached, he knew that he was nearing the end of the world; this far, a little farther. 

He entered the shop.

It feels like entering the shop is the only this that has ever mattered in this world.

The man at the counter doesn't look at him as he enters, and he doesn't have the thousand yard stare of before. He's looking down, brown hair that goes past his ears covering his blue-green-gold-brown eyes. The man's cuts have deepened and widened, and it seemed like more of his body is covered in red than parts that aren't. When the man moves to give Adam his ice cream- Rocky Road- Adam sees hints of white bone hidden in the crimson. The ice cream disappears before he can even touch it this time. As soon as it disappears, the man looks up at Adam, expression disappointed and worried and self-recriminating all at once. Adam smiled, and it took a moment, but the man smiled back.

Adam left the store before he understood that he was crying.

He didn't understand why a smile could hurt so much. 

He looked around at the plains around him, at the trees he had left in the distance and the lake he knew he had left somewhere behind them, and he felt lost despite knowing where he was. The wheat crunched beneath his feet and he could feel the wind against his skin, and it all felt suddenly trivial. He lay on his back until all he could see were the tips of the plants and the blue, blue sky. Clouds scuttled across the sky, zooming with the force of the wind. A moment- or a year or a century- passed, and the sky turned white.

It looked hard, almost, like bone.

It looked sharp, almost, like fear.

The sky and the world around him splintered, a soft snap echoing through the air, the shards of the world breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. He didn't see any light before he was thrown back into the comfortable blackness, one that felt stolen instead of given, one that felt a unstable instead of safe.

He wasn't sure what the instability meant. 

He was sure he was lying when he told himself that.

When the world reformed around him, it felt pointed, wrong. Someone had taken the carefully arranged teacup set of a world and dropped it, and it wouldn't be whole again: the smallest pieces were dust, lost forever as their own tiny planets in a tiny galaxy. There was a sense of time running out, as if a boot were hovering above the wreckage of the fragile cups, ready to destroy them forever. He didn't wait for the boot to come down; he sprinted to the ice cream shop he now knew so well but didn't know at all, really. 

He didn't hesitate before opening the door.

There wasn't time.

The man at the counter was seated, his face in his hands. His hair no longer covered his eyes, shorn and burned as it was; maybe that's why he used his hands to cover his eyes instead. His body was a mass of torn and sliced muscle, and blood flowed freely, his new skin. When Adam went up to the counter, the man didn't offer him an ice cream cone and he didn't look up. Despite that, an ice cream cone was in Adam's hand, and he didn't know how it got there. It didn't matter. Moving slowly, he tapped the man on the shoulder, knowing in the way he did sometimes that his touch wouldn't hurt the man. The man looked up, revealing questioning blue-green-gold-brown eyes that were untouched, unlike the rest of his body. Adam held out his ice cream cone- Rocky Road- in a wordless offer. No words are exchanged, because no words are necessary. The man takes the ice cream cone, taking a bite before it vanishes like the rest of them did. The man smiled, and Adam smiled back.

Adam didn't leave the shop.

He stayed until the end.

The world faded black, creeping in through the edges of his vision. It wasn't him, he knew, it was the world, vanishing piece by piece. The man didn't look scared or sad, he looked calm, a soft smile on his face. A moment- or a year or a century- passed, and the world was black. There was no sound to accompany it; the world does not end with a bang, but with silence and darkness.

It looked intangible, almost, like death.

It looked soft, almost, like acceptance.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, I'd really appreciate comments or kudos, seeing as they tell me I'm doing a good job and that you like my writing. No pressure, though!


End file.
